Monday, May 6, 2013

How my wife snubbed Shia LaBeouf

So we had gone out for some errands on Ventura Blvd. yesterday afternoon, and had finished it off with lattes at a cafe we'd been meaning to check out called Crave. I also got a warm peanut butter cookie, but because of the peanut butter, I couldn't share any of it with my son. (We still don't know whether he's allergic.) However, that didn't stop me from sharing my whipped cream, and in fact, he got most of it. I even got him to say please for each additional mini-scoop, and he obliged in the cutest way imaginable.

Not only did he get the whipped cream, but he also got the spoon from my latte, which we had been using to deliver him the cream. But we didn't notice this until we were back at the car, putting the stroller away.

We could have just gone home with one of Crave's spoons, and the world would have gone on just fine. But we decided to swing by and drop it off. We have enough spoons.

I pulled up next to the curb and my wife jumped out. Just in front of us, unloading something from a shiny black pickup truck, was a thin man in a white t-shirt with sunglasses and a very large number of days of scruff. As my wife walked by him, he tried to give her something for free. She shrugged away as if he'd been thrusting a hot poker at her.

It was Shia LaBeouf.

I was certain of it. When she got back to the car, I said "Why didn't you take that thing? That's Shia LaBeouf!"

We couldn't be sure, because of the sunglasses, but I'd heard a snippet of dialogue from him as he continued unloading with a friend, and I was pretty sure that was Shia.

It was a comic book. The man had told my wife "Happy holidays! Would you like a free comic book?"

I was planning to google "Shia LaBeouf" and "comic books" when I got home, to ascertain whether this could have actually been him, but forgot.

However, fate intervened to confirm. A friend had just posted on Facebook that he had gotten a free comic book from Shia LaBeouf. This inexplicable transaction was quickly explicated: Saturday was Free Comic Book Day.

And it turns out, Shia LaBeouf wrote this comic book. As far as I can tell, it's either something called I Am

Beard or something called Meds. Shia LaBeouf wrote and self-published these comic books, and it appears that he unveiled them about a month ago.

And we could have had one, which would have been fun.

My wife is hopeless about identifying people, but was kicking herself last night.

Me, I'm alright. It had been ages since I'd seen someone famous, which feels kind of like a cruel joke for a cinephile living in Los Angeles.

Welcome to the Audient.

I'm a film critic, currently writing for the Australian film website ReelGood (www.reelgood.com.au). This blog is not reviews per se, but rather, observations about trends in movies as well as some commentary about the quality of the films themselves. But let's be honest -- more than anything it's about me telling you about my own personal viewing habits/anecdotes. Why? As a father of two, I sometimes need to churn this stuff out quickly!